


If Smart, Talk Will Be Enough. If Not Smart…

by silveradept



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: Affection Competition, After-You-No-After-You, F/M, Love Confessions, Not Actually A Competition, Relationship(s), Silent Crono, Taking Advice From Your Ancestors, great minds think alike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26402824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Marle has gathered enough courage to confess her feelings for Crono and ask him to be her boyfriend. With the help of a cunning plan, she'll be able to get the answer she's been waiting too long for.Lucca has gathered enough courage to confess her feelings for Crono and ask him to be her boyfriend. With the help of a cunning plan, she'll be able to talk to Crono enough for him to have to provide her with an answer that she's been waiting for years to hear.Crono, of course, is entirely clueless about any of this.
Relationships: Crono/Marle (Chrono Trigger), Lucca Ashtear/Crono, Lucca Ashtear/Crono/Marle
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Het Swap Exchange 2020





	If Smart, Talk Will Be Enough. If Not Smart…

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Exile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/gifts).



Marle knew Crono was reticent about expressing his feelings for anyone. Lucca was his childhood friend and it was pretty obvious to Marle that she had more than just friendship in mind for him. She hadn't wanted to set up a situation where he was being asked to choose between his childhood friend and the princess who had fallen in love with him, but she wasn't going to back down just because Lucca was also competing for Crono's affections..

She was, at least, going to try and minimize any reason why he would pick her for the family connections and the royal coffers. Not that he seemed to care, but still, she didn't want anyone who thought of her money before they thought of her. It's why she had decided to tag along with him in the first place. He was the only one who looked at her without a flicker of recognition passing over their face, even if most of them were smart enough not to call her anything but the name she supplied them.

She'd taken a quick trip to see Ayla, hoping for some family wisdom from her great ancestor, and after a little drinking (in Ayla's opinion, words were truer and freer when they had a little booze behind them. What Ayla meant as a little booze, of course, was far more and far stronger than Marle was used to in palace life, but at least she had remembered the advice. So she had invited Crono over to one of his favorite places to see if he was as interested in her as she still was in him, and then to see where everything went.

As she crested the hill she was planning on using for her talk (and some food), she froze in place, knowing her shock probably mirrored Lucca's that they had both apparently decided on the same place and time to confess their feelings.

"Aww, fuck," she said exasperatedly.

Lucca, for her part, hadn't wanted to step on the clear and burgeoning romance developing between Marle and Crono, but she knew that she would regret it forever if she didn't at least try to get her childhood friend and crush to acknowledge their feelings for each other. The adventures they'd had together had made it clear that Crono was good at giving people all the space they needed, even if they were all crammed into a tent or a single room at an inn together. They'd held hands together, and his interest in her machines had always seemed to be more than just an idle curiosity or surface appreciation of her work.

So she had gone to see Ayla, because Ayla was the person from their adventures who had gotten what she wanted and would be willing to give advice about it. After a little (by which Ayla apparently meant a lot) bit of drinking something that Lucca was pretty sure could be used more effectively as an engine fuel than as a recreational drink, Ayla had given her some advice about how to properly confess her feelings to Crono.

She'd made her plans accordingly, with attention paid to the optimal place, date, time, and foodstuff to bring along, and was getting ready to deploy her operation when Marle came bounding over the hilltop that she had carefully selected.

"Well, fuck," Lucca said, in response to Marle's appearance and subsequent realization that they were both in the same place at the same time with the same intent.

"Ayla's advice," they said together, recognizing their own plan in each other's setup.

"I wonder which one of us saw her first," Lucca said.

"I'm pretty sure it was you," Marle replied. "There was a gleam in Ayla's eye when I asked her for advice, like this wasn't the first time someone had asked her the question. At the time, I figured this was something she gets asked all the time by the girls of the village, and she was taking some extra laughs that it was her own descendant, many generations later, who was coming to her for advice."

"Well, I should probably pack up, then," Lucca said. "I don't want to get in the way of what you have planned."

"I should be the one offering to leave," Marle said in return. "After all, you were here first, and it would be fair for me to have to wait."

"I'm not sure there's anything for you to be afraid of," Lucca said, smiling a smile that Marle noticed never made it to her eyes. "Why wouldn't he choose you? You're smart, capable, and have the entire kingdom to keep his interest. I might invent something neat and make a little money on it, but choosing me isn't logical when you have so much more to offer."

"Your inventions are amazing, Lucca. Without them, we wouldn't have had the incredible adventures that brought us all together. And, well, being a queen will only be even more boring than being a princess is. I don't know if Crono wants to be there for all the boring stuff. He should probably choose someone who will let him keep having adventures."

"We have a _time machine_ ," Lucca said. "With a few modifications to increase the accuracy of the temporal flux, we could have you back almost as soon as you snuck off to have an adventure."

"Yeah, but…what if I didn't come back? How would the kingdom cope without a queen? How would all of _you_ cope if I went missing, like the first time we went back to 600? I'm pretty sure Lenne is not the only ancestor I would be mistaken for."

Lucca shrugged. "Time is weird, scientifically speaking. We can probably fix anything that involves being mistaken for your ancestors. And we can probably figure out some way of pulling you away from anything where you supposedly went on to die. And, well, if everything else failed, we could get Gaspar to build us another Time Egg to use for you."

"Because you think there are clones of us all waiting at the festival and we can just warp in and freeze time whenever we want to?" Marle asked skeptically.

"Perhaps not all the times we want to," Lucca said, adjusting her glasses, "but at least once, and after that, we probably won't have to do it again. I'd rather not climb a Death Peak again, though."

"Yeah." Marle looked like she was reliving a memory for a minute. "I could have kissed him when we got him back. Why haven't you kissed him already?" she said, turning on Lucca.

"He's never shown an interest in anything other than my inventions," Lucca said. "So I wasn't sure if he was interested in me. Or anyone, for that matter. Why didn't you kiss him?"

"Princess." Marle said flatly. "Daddy isn't exactly the kind of person who is about to let young men get away with kissing his precious daughter. Also," Marle said, cringing at the admission, "I was kind of responsible for him getting thrown in prison, and also you would both still be wanted criminals for escaping prison, were it not for the whole 'the chancellor is evil and so we had to pardon a lot of people that he sentenced or convicted' thing, so, I've always assumed I didn't exactly make a great first impression."

"That is…entirely fair," Lucca said.

"I wish he could just say which one of us is the one he wants to be with," Marle said, sitting down on the grass. "It would hurt if it wasn't me, but at least I wouldn't be stuck in this waiting loop, trying to read romance into everything he does."

"Are you sure that's the right hypothesis?" Lucca said. "It's entirely possible Crono doesn't want either of us, or is into men, or…frogs…or something else entirely."

Marle frowned. "So you're saying that you don't believe your close childhood friendship or our meet cute did anything at all for his feelings for either of us?"

"I can't say," Lucca said. "Crono has never really been all that talkative on his life. If he did have a preference, I would be shocked to hear him say it."

"He was also really good at staying quiet when we needed to sneak around places." Marle added, snapping her head up and scanning the area. "Like right now," she added, pointing behind Lucca to where Crono was standing on top of the hill.

Lucca turned to see Crono, impressed with his stealth.

"How long have you been here?" Lucca asked, feeling an embarrassed flush rising in her face.

"How much did you hear?" Marle asked, jumping to her feet, a different sort of heat showing on her face.

Crono shrugged, as if he hadn't been there the entire time. Seeing both of their picnic preparations, he got a bright smile on his face.

"So, who is it going to be?" Marle said, accusingly. "The least you could do is let one of us down gently."

Crono put his hands up defensively and began backing away.

"You know, Ayla's advice is beginning to look really good right now. Since talking doesn't seem to have resolved anything…" Marle said, hefting her crossbow.

"…bash him on the head and drag him to our tent?" Lucca finished, fingering the handle of her mallet.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Marle said, charging the hill.

Of course, Lucca realized belatedly, there was also the hypothesis that Crono didn't want to choose between them because he wanted them both. _That_ was an intriguing prospect to keep in her head as she kept walking toward Truce. 

Lucca climbed to the top of the hill, saw Crono's swiftly-retreating form with Marle in hot pursuit, and began packing up both of their picnic plans to take back with her down the hill. Crono had always had a particular place near her house he liked to hide when he was in trouble with his mother. If Marle could keep pace with him, that's probably where he would instinctively go to escape her. 

The walk would give Lucca enough time to decide whether she wanted to let him get away and wait for another time for Crono to express an actual preference or trap him in there with Marle and herself, to force the issue. And if the latest hypothesis were correct, being all together in a relatively secluded place could be quite interesting indeed.


End file.
